I like radio guy Hugh Hewitt (whom I listen to on 1280 AM “The Patriot”). On Wednesday I heard him interview Rick Santorum. The issue of Pres. Obama’s attack on the Catholic Church and 1st Amendment came up and Santorum hit a home run.

Mr. Hewitt has a transcript. Please go there to read the whole thing and spike his stats. And tell him Fr. Z sent you. (I really would appreciate it if you would, too. He links to WDTPRS on his side bar under the “Friends and Allies of Rome” rubric! Fun!)

RS: I talked about it in every speech I’ve given today. And here’s what I said, though, Hugh. I said that I took issue with the Catholic Bishops Conference, because Hugh, you may remember, they embraced Obamacare.

HH: Yes.

RS: They embraced it and said…here’s what I said to them. Be careful when you have government saying that they can give you rights, that you have a right to health care, and government’s going to give you something, because once you are now dependant on government, they, not only can they take that right away, they can tell you how to exercise that right, and you can either like it or not. And that’s the problem. That’s what the Catholic Bishops Conference didn’t get, that there’s no free lunch here, folks. If you’re going to give people secular power, then they’re going to use it in a secular fashion. And that’s why, you know, I hate to say it, but you know, you had it coming. And it’s time to wake up and realize that government isn’t the answer to the social ills. It’s people of faith, and it’s families, and it’s communities, and it’s charities that need to do this as it has in America so successfully for so long.

HH: Rick Santorum, what do you advise Catholic hospitals, Catholic colleges, Catholic…the centers of poverty assistance, the adoption agencies? What do you advise them to do in the face of, as Archbishop Olmstead said, we cannot comply with this unjust law?

RS: Civil disobedience. This will not stand. There’s no way they can make this stand. The Supreme Court, eventually, this thing’s going to get to the Supreme Court just like the ministerial hiring issue that was just decided by the Supreme Court the other day. And it was a 9-0 decision that said the Obama administration can’t roll over people of faith when it comes to hiring. Yet in the face of that decision, this radical, secular government of Barack Obama continues to have faith be the least important of the 1st Amendment. And I just think they fight. They fight in the courts, and they fight by civil disobedience, and go to war with the federal government over this one.
[…]

“They fight in the courts, and they fight by civil disobedience, and go to war with the federal government over this one.”

And they invoke the Archangel Michael to fight along with them, because, as Senator Santorum has rightly pointed out, they aren’t sufficiently fortified to win the battle on their own. The generals have mostly forgotten how be firm and how to command the troops and, as a result, most of the footsoldiers in their ranks…have joined the other side by now.

The princes of the Church would do well to commit this cause, very humbly and very fervently, into the much more capable hands of the Prince of the Heavenly Host. Let him lead the charge; let not any of them imagine that they are capable. This is brewing into something too big for them, I’m afraid.

Santorum is showing his ignorance. The USCCB opposed Obamacare. So may he should stop his calumny there? Whether or not they were competent in how they opposed it, they did oppose it.

Further, it is a teaching of the Church that there is a right to medical care. Cf. Pacem in terris.

Moreover, while we can argue about how that right can and ought to be ensured and protected, the state does play a role. It is the doctrine of liberalism that reduces the state to merely guarding property rights and against physical violence. Subsidiary means that the larger societies are supposed to aid and protect, constrain and direct, etc the lower ones for the sake of the common good. Not replace them, but aid them. You don’t have subsidiarity when you toss out that aid.

On a practical level, what he says about this mandate is fine. But the GOP in general is MIA on the issue of healthcare. We have better response time than other countries. But no where else are we number 1…well except cost per person. This apparently successful system costs often more than twice as much per person as healthcare in Britain, Canada, Australia. I would like, just once, for a GOP candidate to address that cost. Our government spends more per capita that Canada’s government does. Charity cannot come close to replacing that.

You know me and you know my son. I lived in Canada and in Great Britain. The health care systems are horrible. As a older woman having a baby in England, almost 40, I had five doctors arguing with me in my face to have an amniocentesis. When I refused it, as spontaneous abortion can sometimes occur, I was told that my baby would have Down’s, and that he and I would be a “drain on the system”. How could I possibly think, they yelled, of using the government’s money for such? I was alone facing these screaming so-called professionals, including two women, as my husband was at work. I cried all the way home, but stood firm. Of course, my son was born perfectly fine.

In Canada, the doctors botched my serious operation because of money issues. Do not kid yourselves, the foreign national health cares are horrible. And, the systems are prejudiced against a Catholic woman’s freedom of conscience.

In addition, these systems encourage euthanasia. A friend of mine in England has cancer at an early stage. She is about 54. She has already been offered euthanasia as an alternative to operations and radiation. There is nothing moral about national, socialistic health systems.

I got to take the kids to a stump speech by Santorum, and he addressed this there, too. He also discussed his view of how to reform health care, which is solid common sense and would aide everyone. It does, by the way, directly address the issue of health care costs in America, why they are high, and how to lower them.

I was very glad to hear him disagree with those in the Church that had aligned themselves with the health care reform bill, because to be honest the record of “Catholic” politicians tends to make me less, rather than more, inclined to support a politician who self-describes as Catholic. I suspect the largely Christian Evangelical crowd I was in might be inclined the same way. The general population feels, with good reason, that public Catholics are pretty left.

On the point of subsidiarity, I often think of it these days. We are using a state program that allows us to buy private insurance for our kid with a pre-existing condition. It’s a good program, solid, serves us well, and has a common sense solution to the portability problem (you have to come from one insurance onto the program or wait six months for coverage, thereby preventing people from signing up only once they get sick). If the federal “reforms” continue to go through, this more local program will end by 2014, and unless we can get our income up we’ll have to either try to find a company that will buy our insurance for us or we’ll have to go on Medicaid. Top down isn’t aiding or protecting us much, although constraining and directing it seems to be pretty good at.

Kudos to Sen. Santorum. I hope his campaign catches fire. The Catholic Bishops may find themselves fighting a war with no army behind them, I fear. For 50 years since Humanae Vitae the American church has ignored and wink-winked at catholics who practice artificial means of contraception, and told them it was a matter of “personal conscience.” In the meantime, every prediction made by Pope Paul VI about the consequences of artificial contraception has come true, to the detriment of society and women in particular. Now they want the faithful to rise up behind them to oppose something they, at the very least ignored, and in some cases supported, for the past decades. I hope I’m wrong but I think it may be too late. I hope they get a good team of lawyers to fight in the courts, and for once exhort the faithful to remember in November that it is the President who appoints the justices to the Supreme Court. Decisions by the court have more lasting effect on our lives than all the presidents and congresses combined. Just ask the 50 million babies aborted since Roe v. Wade.

Thanks supertradmom for refuting joshuas rubbish. The bishops supported BOcare because of their misplaced compassion, not to mention their mistrust in subsidiarity, but in the end, had to OPPOSE it because they didn’t believe the “deal” BO promised them concerning abortion. Sorry Joshua, but sister carol what’s-her-name is not the Church. And as we now see, BO is the liar most of us knew he is.

But, more importantly, the ex-Catholic Hugh Hewitt is quoted here on his promos on the radio as saying “I would rather vote for Obama than Ron Paul.” Nice, HH, real nice.

Well, if you live in a state that begins with “M”, you might be in a position to do something about that. Minnesota, Missouri, and Maine all have primaries or caucuses this week, and Michigan has one later this month.

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